Managing surge staff and resources at the WHO Representative Office in the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan

Abstract

On 8 November 2013, the category-5 Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines and the scale of destruction rated it as a Level-3 grade from the ERF.⁴ This occurred one month after an ERF Grade 2 earthquake in Bohol where over 1.2 million people were affected and an estimated 79,000 structures damaged, some irrevocably.⁵An ERF Level 1 event was also ongoing as a result of a clash between the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines in September 2013 in what came to be known as the Zamboanga City Crisis.^6,7 In December 2012, the ERF Level 1⁸Typhoon Bopha made landfall thrice in Northern Mindanao, Central Visayas and Palawan.⁹

The objective of this paper is to compare the role of the administrative team from the WHO Office of the Philippines in the response following Typhoon Haiyan to the response with the three previous large-scale events.